I haven't read the blogs or the articles about the Vice Presidential Debate last night, moderated by PBS's Gwen Iffil.  As with the Presidential Debate, I wanted to mull over my own reaction prior to reading all the spin and hype.

I suspect that many people will say that Sarah Palin did "well enough."  My question, I suppose, is well enough for what?  True, Palin didn't have any major gaffes.  And some folks might like the way she drops her "g's" on words endin' in ing...or the way she winks when she thinks she's made a connection with "regular folks."  Or even the way she says "nucular" instead of nuclear (shades of Dubya during the debates with Gore and Kerry). 

But I am not among those who find such things folksy or charming.  Call it a personal quirk, but I like the bar set relatively high for the person who may be called upon to lead our country if something should befall the president.  I'd like for that individual to demonstrate a clear understanding of the issues facing our nation's economy, the issues facing us as a nation in a rapidly shifting and dangerous world, and the longer term issue of climate change.  In each of these areas, Governor Palin showed herself to be woefully unqualified.

Starting with the economy, Palin showed absolutely no understanding of the circumstances that led to our current economic crisis.  It would be one thing if she disagreed with O'Biden (as she called him once) and Obama on the causes of the current meltdown (like Jeffrey Miron in the article I blogged about a few days back).

But no, according to Palin, those responsible are the "predator lenders."  (She couldn't even get predatory right as the modifier for lenders.)  She returned again and again to the (empty) promise that she and "John" would get government back on the side of the people and that they would "stop the greed and corruption on Wall Street."  (How does one stop greed?)  Palin seemed completely unaware that a good portion of "that Wall Street greed" ran rampant because her guy (and others like him) pushed for deregulation with a sort of blind faith in the ability of markets to regulate themselves.  Part of Palin's solution?  Strict oversight.  Oh, the irony!

In a similar way, Palin was adrift when talking about the causes of global warming.  Her first assertion was that "As the nation's only arctic state and being governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state."

I think the folks who took the brunt of Katrina and Ike may beg to differ with her.

She then went into an almost unintelligible speech.  "I'm not one to attribute every man...activity of man to the changes in the climate."  Perhaps she meant she didn't attribute the changes in the climate to every activity of man?  She rambled a bit about cyclical changes in climate and then asserted that she really didn't want to argue about the causes, she wanted to argue about "How are we gonna get there to positively affect the impacts."  Huh?

Parsing out that she meant how are we going to deal with global climate change, I was stunned to hear her say that we, the nation who bailed on Kyoto, have to encourage other nations to come along with us.  Does she not realize that it's the other way around? 

Then she went into a positively ridiculous argument about how energy independence is critically tied to managing climate change.  Apparently, by drilling for more oil, we can help "affect the impacts" since as polluters we're less bad than the nations from which we buy oil.  She ended up by saying that she and McCain have "an all of the above approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy, and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons."  Again, I'm not sure how tapping our oil reserves translates into conserving our "hydrocarbons." 

I'm belaboring the point a bit, I realize.  But there's a reason.  As she was spouting all of this gobbledy-gook, I flashed on Sarah Palin as Vice President.  Negotiating in her "area of expertise" with leaders from other nations.  And I cringed.

Her performance was not much better when it got to foreign policy.  She echoed McCain's line that we have to "win in Iraq" without delineating why a withdrawal with a timeline is "a white flag of surrender."  She gushed about how much she "loves" Israel while clearly not grasping the Bush administration's blunders in the area.  And she fumbled through a discussion of nuclear weapons policy.

Then she had the temerity to school marm Joe Biden by saying, "Diplomacy is hard work by serious people."

Indeed.

But perhaps the scariest moment of the evening came when Palin asserted that she, like Dick Cheney, believes that there's "flexibility" in the Vice President's role in the Senate and that she would be exploring that flexibility as Vice President.  Another area where we do NOT need more of the same as Bush/Cheney, consolidating or outright highjacking of legislative powers by the executive branch.

Palin lost the debate last night and lost big.  No matter what the pundits say or how loudly John McCain howls his approval, she lost.

The only good news (besides Biden restraining himself admirably and coming across as well-prepared to be second in command) came from my bingo card.  I won with a diagonal list of Palinisms: Alaska, Special Needs, Air Space (which was the free space), Hockey Mom and Terrorists.

Let's hope that's the only time I get to play.

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